thismango Reviews

The Promised Land (1975)

Technically impressive but crude and offensive

[2/10 · 3 September 2014]

Having read the previous reviews of this film, I am inclined to agree with the lone 3-star one. I'm no flag-waver for capitalism, but stereotyped images do not help anyone. What disturbed me most was the crude stereotyping of Jews. One reviewer here has argued that all of the characters appear as crude, unsympathetic stereotypes - as if that were a defence of the film - and that it is therefore acceptable to stereotype Jews. I disagree. Even if the general tendency to crude theory-driven characterisation did not invalidate the whole thing, which in my opinion it does, there would still remain a difference in the way the crude stereotypes are constructed.

The capitalists and peasants are stereotyped according to their social class: offensive enough, just as much to the grovelling, screeching workers and peasants as to the yapping, striding, quail-crunching capitalists and aristocrats. On the other hand, the Jewish characters are clearly stereotyped along racial lines. Look at the depiction of traditional Jewish culture. Three men in ritual costumes are praying. When they finish, one of them (I presume the Rabbi) says he is paying one of them less than the other because he didn't pray with enough concentration. What could be a more crude, vicious and insulting repetition of the clichéd old stereotype of the two-faced, money-obsessed Jew? The scene could have been used to create a contrast between traditional Jews and those who become involved in capitalism but, no, it's all of them.

The central Jewish character is as subtle as a black-and-white minstrel. The effeminate facial expressions; the inability to appreciate social situations except for their business opportunities; the way he looks on impotently as the properly manly Germans and Poles get their ends away at an orgy; there is little to the character but a collection of classic stereotypes. It's extremely tedious.

I see little substantial difference between this frenetic, overheated mess and the poisonous ranting of Karl Marx in 'On the Jewish Question'.

Martyrs (2008)

Incoherent and pointlessly disturbing

[5/10 · 29 March 2014]

Is this a good film? It's not a good thing, in the sense that a good poison is not a good thing. It's quite effective at making you feel very bad, but not for a good enough reason.

On reflection, I have to agree with those reviewers who found the philosophical premise flimsy. This is an ambitious film that attempts to transcend its genre in a way that even the most disturbing Japanese horror films do not. Setting its aim so high means that it stands or falls on the theoretical premise, and I don't think it does stand. It's just not worth it.

I was spellbound during the experience, shocked into receptivity by the sheer nastiness of the events, but the ending did not quite do the trick. The victim's final vision was clichéd, and having her whisper something incomprehensible was a cop-out. In the end, I felt that I had gone through a painful experience for no good reason. I would not repeat that experience and I do not recommend it.

There is a macho attitude among certain directors who value cynicism, inhumanity and transgression for its own sake. Actually, those values are quite easy to attain and rather immature. Most of us get it out of our system in our early 20s. This affectedly cold attitude betrays a kind of spiritual impotence, emotional smallness and misapprehension of life in those who express it: the existential analogue of a porn-induced hard-on, for an adolescent culture.

The Night of the Hunter (1955)

Timelessly profound and moving

[9/10 · 29 March 2014]

This film transcends its time in a rare fashion. It still has a charming element of the stage about it, which only enhances its excellence.

The opening speech shows that we are dealing with some bold themes: "...there are some things that You (i.e. God) hate: perfumed things, lacy things, things with curly hair...", soliloquises the Preacher - a clear reference to the female sexual organs, surprisingly close to explicitness.

The themes of sexual repression, misogyny and the differences between true and false religion are intelligently explored throughout the film, alongside the thrilling story of the two child heroes. The treatment of spirituality is quite subtle - true religion is not simply the religion of the Church, as shown by the hypocritical townspeople whose allegiances change with the wind. Spiritual attainment is demonstrated by the kind mother figure who finally defeats the false Preacher. Her inner strength, wisdom and selfless love transcend the simple, homespun Biblical idiom she uses to express her insight.

An absolute joy to behold.

Spider (2002)

Cronenberg bows to the medical industry

[5/10 · 7 January 2014]

In Spider, Cronenberg seems to have been trying to move into a new style, more visually subtle and without the reliance on special effects. Unfortunately, he has also started to toe the line politically and psychologically, losing the radical edge of some earlier films.

The central performance by Fiennes as Clegg is technically interesting and appears at first to be a well researched and sympathetic approach to mental illness. His script (if you can call it a script) consists mostly of mumbling his own internal dialogue. His desperate attempt to make sense of his life by writing down childhood memories in his own invented language is quite moving. The character rings true to this extent.

Cronenberg's typical multi-layered distortion of reality is present. The adult Clegg is shown as an observer at various key events in his childhood, telling us that we are seeing these events as memories in the present. Thanks. However, we never really know which are real and which are imagined. Did the blonde slapper in the pub exist at all? Did Clegg actually kill his mother or is this just another symbolic building block in his psychosis? His father's reaction to her death in the house seems unnaturally muted, which suggests this may be another figment - or is it just poor acting? The present-time action of the film takes place over just two or three days while he is living in a halfway house after release from a secure mental institution.

This is a theoretically ambitious film, so I feel justified in judging it on theoretical grounds. It is strongly Freudian in its psychological theory. One of the first disturbances to Clegg's psyche comes when he finds his mother trying on a night-dress. He runs away when she says she's trying to make herself attractive for his father. This is obviously supposed to show the formation of the Oedipus complex which dominates the film's psychology. The Madonna-whore imagery of the blonde- and dark-haired mothers is also a rather heavy-handed effort at psychological or even esoteric depth.

More disappointing is that there is no convincing explanation for Clegg's psychosis apart from Freudian dogma. It just happens, and isn't it a shame. The shame is that Cronenberg has backed away from the radically critical position of films like Videodrome to this completely orthodox embodiment of Freudian psychology and the organic disease model of mental illness.

Spider takes itself very seriously, without having much to say. If it had been able to show some kind of inner aetiology from a contingent and biographical rather than a purely theoretical point of view, it could have been a decent drama.

The Hunger Games: Catching Fire (2013)

Rubbish, not even entertaining rubbish

[2/10 · 2 January 2014]

This is one of the few films I've seen at the cinema recently, because a friend wanted to go. We regretted it. I hadn't seen the first film but I was right to expect that I would somehow manage to pick up the great subtleties of the story.

Set in a clichéd dystopian future, the film is stodgily paced, cringeingly acted and preposterously conceived. It's yet another example of the tendency for really bad films to resemble computer games - spinning lakes of doom! Giant man-eating baboons! Special skills! One of the many contenders for the most embarrassing feature of this festering mess is the over-stylised attempt to show the decadence of the wealthy section of society. It's been done so much better so many times that it wasn't really worth bothering, especially in a talentless cash-in like this.

Having seen and appreciated much better efforts on this theme - the original Battle Royale and the rather interesting 1960s experimental film Punishment Park - the only thing to appreciate about this one was being in a comfy seat as the nonsense dragged on.

Sleep Tight (2011)

Exciting but not psychologically convincing

[6/10 · 11 January 2013]

Cesar is a strange role for the ubiquitous Luis Tosar, whose spectacular eyebrows are almost a match for my own owl-like appendages, which I hope one day to be able to comb over my bald spot - it's too late for Luis. I'm sure in all other ways he is bigger, tougher and more talented than me, but I'm going to criticise this film nonetheless.

I had previously seen him in the excellent and scrupulously right-on Even the Rain and Cell 211, both unreservedly recommended. In Sleep Tight (I presume the translators changed the title from While You Are Sleeping because of the US film with a similar name), however, the thesis is more of the Daily Mail variety. To paraphrase the school counsellor from South Park, bad people are bad because they're bad. Even from an individual psychological point of view, the background of the character is not convincingly sketched in. We are shown that he makes other people miserable to make his dying mother miserable by telling her about how bad he is, but there is no indication of why. Cesar declares himself physiologically incapable of happiness. I can certainly imagine someone saying that, but I am no more convinced by such an explanation after seeing this film than I would have been before.

Leaving aside the hollowness of the central concept, Sleep Tight is exciting and well made. There are some heart-stopping moments of suspense and entertaining plot twists with intricate but convincing logic. Marta Etura, playing Cesar's main victim, Clara, does a good job of showing her cumulative horror as the plot works out.

This film offers a certain amount of enjoyment as a tense and exciting thriller, but don't expect too much depth in the underlying psychology.

Enter the Void (2009)

Garish metaphysical pornography

[5/10 · 10 November 2012]

I'm rating this film 5 out of 10 because it's half 10 and half 0. It's mind-blowing, highly original, preposterous nonsense. It's certainly the most depressing film I've seen by a long way. If you remember the way Requiem for a Dream leaves you feeling filthy and sick and multiply that by a factor of 100, and bear in mind that we're dealing with the reality-warping effects of psychedelics, you may be close to imagining the effect of Enter the Void on your typical open-minded hominid.

The acting is extremely odd. For the first few minutes I thought I was watching some amateur or student effort. The level of abstraction is fairly high and the characterisation is minimal. If he was trying to recreate the effect of some bunch of jokers filming themselves taking drugs and posting the results on YouTube, he hasn't done badly.

The film feels like it's been made by a grizzled crew of mischievous tripped-out cynics who are determined to screw up your brain even if you don't take drugs by creating some kind of irreversible philosophical virus. At times I felt like I was seeing things that should not be seen - and I don't mean the graphic sex scenes - a kind of metaphysical pornography, like catching God having a sly ham-shank.

The sheer quantity of semi-abstract cityscapes as the main character's disembodied mind floats around Tokyo was a great risk to take, but the director has certainly had considerable success in building the abstract philosophical structure through the imagery so that the cumulative effect is actually quite stunning, even for a resolutely non-arty film person like me. The entire cityscape becomes a senseless, nightmarish abstraction. There are mind-blowingly brilliant moments in this film of a kind which I have never experienced before. At those times I thought it was one of the most powerful pieces of cinema I've ever seen. It's taking on themes which have been attempted before but never with such thoroughness.

There are two major factors that let down Enter the Void. The first is the half-baked references to Buddhism. The director does appear to have a certain degree of understanding of Karma, as is clear from the sense of escalating spiritual tension, like a static charge building up. This is a reasonably accurate depiction of Karma. However, he has no understanding of Nirvana. Enter the Void depicts Samsara without Nirvana. This could be called nihilism. It is depressive, and it is not a correct understanding of Buddhism. A more serious misunderstanding comes from the use of the phrase 'the' Void. There isn't any 'the' Void. Voidness is simply the innate quality of existence. There isn't anything to enter or not enter. He has mistaken Buddhism for a metaphysical theory. This is quite typical of those who think drugs are a shortcut to spiritual experience.

This error leads to the second major flaw in the film, which is the ending. It is disappointing, pat and simplistic. After sitting through so many excruciating hours of gruelling hallucinatory grimness, I was still feeling excited by the film's achievements, but when the ending arrived I suddenly thought, "that was a total pile of crap - what a tosser. Get some sleep, son." Looking back on it, it's somewhere in between.

13 Assassins (2010)

Technically polished but lacks true depth

[6/10 · 6 October 2012]

13 Assassins is not a bad film at all. However, it is not a great film. Essentially we are in the territory of Kurosawa, so comparison with that great master is in order. The references are abundantly clear, particularly to The 7 Samurai.

The director is self-consciously quoting not only some of the plot elements of 7 Samurai, but also Kurosawa's classically-influenced style, which Miike updates technically for the video-game generation. We see the immaculately choreographed war councils in classically elegant rooms, but Kurosawa's grainy black and white photography is replaced by lush colour tones. This is indeed beautiful and the technical performance of most of the main actors is more than adequate to the high demands of the setting.

Though 13 Assassins is impressive in parts, they do not make a satisfying whole. It lacks tonal structure and progression. It is messy and excessive at times. Much attention has been paid to detail, but not enough to the overall structure. More importantly, it lacks the underlying presence of the master's hand and eye which dignifies Kurosawa's films and makes them very much more than beautiful, carefully constructed stories. Clearly, one does not expect from Miike a straight reconstruction of Kurosawa's philosophy. However, with such abundance of quotation, I think one is entitled to expect more than this rather empty and often scrappy technical performance.

Tampopo (1985)

Slurp! Delightful.

[8/10 · 6 October 2012]

When so many films both in Asia and the West are either cynically grim or tediously self-indulgent, it is a delight to experience the masterful work of a director who views humanity with warmth and sympathy but without illusion, who can be amusing without being silly, profound without being pompous, and serious without being depressing.

Tampopo is completely unique and defies definition in terms of genre and subject matter. It is moving, amusing and sad. Beyond its emotional content it has a philosophical depth which is not conceptually elaborated but which permeates it like the subtle flavour of a perfect noodle stock.

The main characters are all fairly thoroughly rounded and battered by the abrasions of life. Without hiding their sadness, we see their joy in appreciating small achievements and subtle pleasures. There is a simple storyline but it's not the main point of the film. The real content is in the development of the characters and their interactions, and the subtly exaggerated comedy of the world view expressed in the film. There are numerous side-plots which range from extreme violence to hilarious eccentricity - a gangster is horribly murdered in front of his girlfriend; an elderly woman infuriates a shopkeeper by sneaking around the shop squeezing items of food.

Tampopo is an absolute joy and offers a refreshingly original viewpoint on the possibilities of film making. And it will make you hungry.

2046 (2004)

Trivial, decadent whingeing

[3/10 · 5 October 2012]

I know I'm going against the flow but I hated this film. I love Asian cinema, I love gently-paced subtle films, and I love sensuality. I particularly love those things in combination. But I hated this film.

It's not as clever as it thinks it is. I like clever films. But I am irritated by people trying to be clever and failing. The themes hinted at in this film are vague and fantastic. It has a stylistic appearance of being philosophical when actually there is no philosophy behind it, either thought through or felt through. The director shows nowhere near the level of intellectual strength or depth necessary to achieve what the style of the film claims to achieve. It is made in an apparently evocative style but evokes nothing in me but contempt.

Even more irritating is the basic subject matter of the film, which is essentially self-indulgent pretty people whingeing about the side-effects of their over-complicated love lives. Oh, the hardship of having to sleep with yet another gorgeous, sensual young woman after a night of unrestrained drinking and gluttony. I hated this film for much the same reason I have little time for Evelyn Waugh. I have no sympathy at all and I'm not interested. I can see why 2046 would appeal to shallow, self-indulgent, complacent pseudo-intellectuals by gratifying their own precious self-obsession. I'm not one of them.

Ye che (2007)

Relentlessly grim

[6/10 · 30 September 2012]

The sparse, anti-aesthetic visual quality of this film is evident from the first scene in an unappealing ballroom dancing venue. Even when, in a late scene, we see the natural beauty of mountains around the reservoir, the inhuman scale of the mountains and sky only heightens the isolation and despair expressed in the scene.

The style is strangely abstracted. No-one has any control of their life. They respond with inevitable tragedy to a hopeless and meaningless existence, as if they are already dead. Sound and dialogue are minimal and minimally informing.

The courtroom scene is utterly depressing, depicting a mechanical trial process without the slightest trace of humanity and a cheap backyard execution. The execution itself is never shown. This film is made to shock, but the shock is in its emotional impact, not in any kind of facile visual effects.

The executioner, the film's main character, moves with relentless emotional logic towards the conclusion, though the film finishes before we are shown what actually happens. The lead actress expresses her inner thoughts eloquently with her almost expressionless face. There is an extended view of her face in contemplation, and though on the surface nothing is happening in the shot, the viewer knows exactly what is going through the character's mind.

There is not the slightest hint of redemption for any of the characters. The only one who seems to have any enjoyment of life is the stripper and prostitute who lives next door to the executioner, and her joy is merely a kind of manic displacement of despair.

Although Night Train skilfully and effectively achieves its aim, I always have my doubts about films or literature which portray life as utterly, relentlessly grim with no redeeming features whatsoever. It may be like that for many people most of the time, some people all of the time, and most people some of the time, but it is not a complete picture of life. Possibly it is more true in the PRC than in some other places, but even so, I doubt that it tells the full story of life in that country. The shock it delivers is relatively subtle, but nevertheless I think that the film was made to shock rather than to deliver a balanced view of life.

Queen Margot (1994)

Interesting take on the time

[7/10 · 14 February 2012]

An interesting and original attempt to reconstruct 16th century French court society. The atmosphere is grimy, violent and claustrophobic, with repeated outbursts of extravagantly expressed, uncontrolled emotion. The power structure of feudal society is clearly shown as distinctly different from today's, being more of a network of explicitly violent threats than an ideological legal framework, a theory which was also expressed quite well in the first of the recent Elizabeth films (the second one is excremental). If our rulers today were expected to prove their prowess by fighting large fierce mammals, politics would look rather different.

The film portrays an extremely important episode in French and European history, a major step towards the establishment of Absolutism which then led to its own downfall in the Revolution. However the major political developments are left in the background. I was barely able to sketch them in with my own vague knowledge of the time, so this film might be a bit difficult to understand with no background knowledge at all. Hopefully this will stimulate viewers to find out more!

There is prominent sexual content in this film. In my opinion it was neither excessive nor gratuitous. Sexuality was an important part of feudal court politics, and the emotional content of all the sex scenes forms an integral part of the portrayal of the characters' complex and conflicting motivations.

There is also explicit violence. Again, this is integral to the development of the plot, characters and atmosphere. Perpetrators of the massacre are shown to be traumatised by what they have done and seen.

This is an ambitious film, skilfully made, whose greatest strength is a vivid expression of an interesting theory about the nature of society in the time in which it is set.

The Poseidon Adventure (1972)

Entertaining disaster film with mystical subtext

[6/10 · 14 February 2012]

This is an entertaining and exciting disaster film that still works without computer-generated special effects.

More interesting for me, however, was the obvious symbolic subtext. It is somewhat eclectic, mostly Christian Gnostic but mixed with European paganism. We begin with an upside-down underwater world, reminiscent of the Celtic otherworld. The characters seek salvation by ascending through the upside-down ship, which makes it symbolically a descent at the same time, as they are heading for the bottom of the ship, referring to the ubiquitous myth of the initiatory descent into the underworld.

The first stage of the escape takes place via a tree. Again, the tree is symbolically upside-down as its base is on the ceiling of the upside-down ship, another image from European pagan mythology.

The Gnostic structure begins with a speech by the main character, a priest with a Nietzschean individualist will-to-power philosophy. After the disaster occurs, he is contrasted with the dull character of the ship's steward who encourages people to play it safe and stay where they are, resulting in certain death. The steward represents the exoteric Church, which leads people into the service of the Demiurge, the false creator God who wants to trap people in his illusory created world by withholding Gnosis from them as in the story of the Fall in Genesis. The priest character is the Gnostic Christ who leads people to salvation by revealing the falsehood of the Demiurge. He leads them to repeatedly risk death in order to escape certain death, which, taken together with his introductory speech, represents the radical self-assertion of the Gnostic initiate or the Renaissance Magus, who dares to know the inner reality of the Godhead for himself, through his own efforts. He attains apotheosis in a self-crucifixion which saves the other surviving characters.

One is only left to ponder on the motivation of the director to go to such effort in order to construct a symbolic sub-plot that probably less than 1% of his viewers will understand or even notice. Secret personal satisfaction or an attempt at subliminal education in comparative religion?

Control (2003)

Original and fascinating

[8/10 · 14 February 2012]

It's very refreshing to see such an original concept these days when most cinema has become production-line rubbish. This Hungarian film quotes pacing techniques from the thriller genre but completely avoids thriller clichés. The characters are the most unglamourous you could imagine.

The film is set in the grimy underworld of an underground railway system. The main characters are a team of ticket inspectors, a rough and ready, amateurish bunch whose uniform consists of a red armband worn over their grubby everyday clothes. They have a series of sometimes hilarious, sometimes frightening interactions with an eccentrically conceived selection of fare-dodging members of the public.

The structure works at several different levels: there is the base stimulation provided by the escalating physical excitement and the pounding, disturbing soundtrack; there is the development of the characters, all thoroughly worked out by the actors; and finally there is a symbolic layer of mostly Jungian psychological imagery in which the lead character is introduced to his Shadow and finally defeats it in an ordeal, leading him to his higher Self, initiated by the mysterious young woman in the teddy bear suit, who reappears in angelic symbolism. There are also hints at conspiracy-theory mythology, with the Owl of Minerva and the sinister suit-wearing boss with a birthmark covering one eye.

If the impact of the film had been based entirely on this symbolic structure, I would have called it heavy-handed. However, the surface structure of the film is so entertaining and amusing, and the characters so realistically and skilfully portrayed, that I think the director just about gets away with it. There's none of the pomposity that affects some symbol-heavy films.

Where the Sidewalk Ends (1950)

Thoroughly enjoyable

[8/10 · 7 February 2010]

This is a very well-made film, meticulously directed and with some excellent character acting that at times is deeply moving - for example the scene with the loyal but unsophisticated sidekick cop and his wife. The plot is convincingly worked out and exciting. The gangster character is particularly interesting and plays an almost metaphysical role in the life of the hero. It's made clear that the cops are just as rough and ready as the underworld characters.

A couple of slight reservations: I found the ending slightly one-sided as it celebrates the hero's successful integration into the structure of the police and justice system, which collapses the ambiguity of the police characters which has been maintained up to that point. Also I found the lead female character somewhat weak: little more than a catalyst for the salvation of the hero, all she seems to do is weep and swoon as the tough guys battle it out.

Fish Tank (2009)

Tediously predictable

[3/10 · 7 February 2010]

At first this appeared to be of the genre 'how many really grim things can happen in an hour and a half'; it soon became apparent that it was more 'how many predictable clichés can happen in an hour and a half'. What I found particularly depressing about this film was not so much the director's total lack of understanding of what is involved in making a film, but their lack of awareness of their lack of understanding.

The film is a series of crass emotional clichés and class stereotyping, with no point to make - political or philosophical - and no sense of direction, consistency or pacing. There are a few cack-handed attempts to introduce symbolism, for example mirrors repeated or broken, without the slightest idea what they actually mean. It's somewhere between an untalented teenager's first film script and an extended episode of Eastenders that takes itself too seriously, with a bit of grim bonking thrown in for the grown-ups.

For some reason I did manage to sit through it in a kind of horrified trance, ending up depressed not by the image of life it portrays but by the way a person of little brain can be so deluded as to think they are making a serious film.